


A Midwinter's Dance

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Onmyouji | The Yin-Yang Master - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-29
Updated: 2007-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secrets and lies, magic and mayhem -- and a blast from a dark past -- in the world of the Heian court.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Midwinter's Dance

**Author's Note:**

> A small contribution to a very large legend, with apologies for the inevitable historical inaccuracies and thanks to heavenscalyx, txanne, the_red_shoes, and perigee for beta service.
> 
> Written for Ozsaur

 

 

i.

Hiromasa looked pleadingly at the servant who stood by the door.

"Surely there has been some mistake?" he mouthed, flicking his eyes in the direction of   
the visitor whom Sato had just shown in.

Sato pursed his lips sourly and produced a slip of paper from his sleeve. Or perhaps   
"slip" was the wrong word for it. Ash black and thick as a fingernail, it bore a tangled   
sigil that looked like it had perhaps been scored into the paper with the point of an awl.   
The grooves had been filled with some sort of paste that seemed, very faintly, to glow.   
Hiromasa took it carefully by the corner and tried to figure out what, if anything, it said.

The visitor shuffled onto the tatami with his shoes still on. Raising an eyebrow at the   
affront, Hiromasa realized it was also a mercy: he could smell the filthy, ill-kempt man   
across the room as it was.

He held up the paper. "What is the meaning of this?"

A chuckle came from the tatami, and the sound of a jug being opened. Hiromasa's mouth   
opened and shut silently in astonished alarm. He turned to call to Sato, but the   
manservant had already retreated.

How dare such a horrible man just walk in and behave so badly? How had he gained   
admittance anyhow? And for heaven's sake, did he have to go straight to the sake like a   
dog to an egg? It was Hiromasa's birthday wine, the jug sent up from his father's house   
in the country. He had been letting it breathe a bit, the better to share it later on. Now   
Hiromasa looked on in horror as the grubby old man tipped the jug and poured himself a   
bowlful, raising it to his chapped, grayish lips with businesslike speed.

There was a hearty gulp, and a satisfied sigh. "My card. Take it out onto the veranda,   
you will read it better by sunlight." His voice was gravelly and dirty as his robes.

Hiromasa cursed his feet with every step. He was not sure why he was obeying the   
commands of a reeking hairball of an old man who stood on his tatami in shit-covered   
shoes, drinking his birthday wine. He was too accustomed to thinking like a court   
musician, Hiromasa decided. Too well trained in the art of the obedient, swift "hai."   
Court life could make a eunuch of you, Uncle Mitsuo had always teased. Perhaps Uncle   
Mitsuo had been right.

The autumn sunlight that gilded the corner of the veranda did not do the same to the thick   
rectangle of paper. Indeed, the card seemed to grow darker in the sun, and the paste that   
formed the sigil brighter. Hiromasa stared, blinked, and stared again. The sigil throbbed   
with light, so brilliant it made him squint. The paper had grown quite warm, almost hot   
to the touch. Hiromasa had no better idea what it said, but it certainly was impressive. He   
would simply have to ask.

Gently, Hiromasa set the thick paper down on the flat top of the black-painted railing and   
turned back toward the interior. His foot had just left the boards when the explosion   
knocked him flat on his face.

ii.

Disconsolate, Hiromasa lit another piece of charcoal and placed it in the brazier, nudging   
the coals with the tongs. The night was not particularly cold, yet he felt chilled through.   
The heat of the fire didn't seem to help much. His elbow throbbed and the side of his   
head still ached from where they had hit the doorpost. The knee that had first hit the   
veranda floor twanged when he moved it. His stomach wrung itself like a rag.

Hiromasa rubbed his knee. He could still, if he closed his eyes, feel how the explosion   
had shoved him, the sudden blow below the shoulder blades, thick yet light, like being hit   
with a roll of cloth. It shouldn't have made him fall. Maybe it wouldn't have, if he hadn't   
been so shocked. But he hadn't exactly expected a piece of paper to explode. What on   
earth was it made from? And how? Seimei would know.

But.

Hiromasa could not quite let the thought go further. He'd been sitting in the dark by the   
heater for hours as it was, trying to hold at bay his fear, his shame, and his longing. It   
wasn't working very well.

Hiromasa didn't want to believe what the visitor had said. Not any of it. Seimei   
wouldn't. And even if he did-if he had-he wouldn't have hidden it, not like that.

But neither could Hiromasa convince himself that it couldn't possibly be true. There was   
a great deal that Seimei simply never talked about, not even in the quiet tender moments   
where they lay spooned together beneath the quilts, skin on skin. It had always seemed to   
Hiromasa that his lover's reticence must be simply part of the path of onmyodo. So much   
was secret. It could scarcely be otherwise.

He had accepted Seimei's silences, his refusal to say much about his past, or even about   
his present, as an inevitable part of what he was. But now Hiromasa realized that he   
didn't even know how old his lover was, not really. Aone-do-and he paused to say a   
short prayer for the magnificent woman who had given her life for his-had made   
mention, once, of having known Seimei for thirty years. That had been several years ago.   
But Abe no Seimei's hair was still black as if it had been lacquered that way, and his skin   
as smooth and soft and yielding as a youth's. He was never ill, not even a sniffle, nor a   
pimple, or even a hangnail so far as Hiromasa could recall. And even alone and in the   
dark, Hiromasa blushed a little thinking of the onmyoji's lithe, hungry virility. It was   
true, Hiromasa had to admit, that Seimei possessed an unusually thoroughgoing and,   
well, constant sort of vigor.

Insofar as Hiromasa had ever thought about it he assumed it was simply dumb luck, that   
Seimei's never-mentioned parents had aged exceptionally well and their son was too. It   
would even be all right, he thought, if it were true that Seimei's mother had been a   
kitsune and that were why. Being half-magical seemed like it could cause that sort of   
thing, and it wasn't as if a man could help who his parents were. It had to be something   
like that, Hiromasa told himself firmly. Surely it couldn't really be that Seimei was   
secretly a necromancer, draining Hiromasa's yang each time they touched.

Hiromasa had been racking his memory for evidence one way or another. He didn't think   
he had grown any weaker since he and Seimei had become more than just friends. But   
the visitor had cautioned him that this might simply be because Seimei was careful   
enough, and subtle enough, to do it very gradually, so gradually Hiromasa would not   
notice until it was too late.

But the explosion had proven that he was weak, hadn't it? The visitor-hadn't he said   
his name was Mando? Yes, that was right-had been surprised at his reaction, running   
over to help Hiromasa up, clucking meanwhile that things were worse even than he'd   
thought. He'd even demonstrated, with another card. It had been loud, yes. But even   
Sato, who had come running to see what was the matter when the first card exploded,   
said that the second one didn't sound any different, and there had been no question that it   
was more bang than anything else. There certainly hadn't been enough of a blast to   
knock a healthy man down. Not by far. Minamoto no Hiromasa hung his head. It   
seemed he was far more enfeebled than he had imagined possible.

He felt weaker still in the cold dark. Weak for not having seen it before, weak for   
needing a stranger to tell him, weak for letting such a thing happen to him, and weaker   
still because in his weakness, the only thing Hiromasa could think of that he knew would   
make him feel better was the one thing he dared not seek. If it was true that Seimei was   
tapping his yang, building reserves of power that would aid him in klling the Mikado by   
spell, then Hiromasa could not see him. Not even to tell him why he was avoiding him.

Hiromasa shook his head slowly, sadly. He felt bad for having thought such unkind   
thoughts about Mando now. Yes, the man had been rude, boorish even, and attacked the   
birthday sake like he hadn't had a drink in ten years. But onmyoji were sometimes   
eccentric, and frequently they were calculating. Mando's behavior had certainly gotten   
Hiromasa's attention. The exploding cards merely made it clear that Mando was who he   
said he was: a powerful magician, usurped from his place in the royal college of onmyoji   
by an ambitious young upstart with a dark, deadly secret.

It bothered Hiromasa to think that Seimei's affections were nothing but a means to an   
end. To be used for what one had, that was one thing. Hiromasa loved Seimei, whether   
he always wanted to or not. He would've given him virtually anything, probably   
including his yang, had Seimei only asked. But he hadn't.

To be used because one was both well-placed and, well, a bit dim was a more difficult   
draught to swallow. Poor hapless Hiromasa, credulous and famously tenderhearted but   
not the sharpest katana in the dojo, nothing but a pawn and he never even knew it.

Hiromasa tried to force himself to be angry at Seimei. He'd been trying ever since   
Mando had left. Perhaps it would come in time. All he could muster so far was a hollow   
ache in his chest, just below and to the right of his heart. He was grateful that Mando had   
told him, he supposed. But to be cut off from Seimei so suddenly, so completely, to learn   
such horrible things with no warning simply hurt, deep and bad, like a broken bone. In   
the end he had thrust money at Mando, swearing up and down that he wouldn't breathe a   
word of the visit to anyone, just to get him to go away, to go away and do whatever a   
discredited, exiled onmyoji needed to do to be able to bring himself and his case before   
the Mikado. Hiromasa just wanted-no, needed-to be alone with the betrayal and the   
lies and the terrible hopelessness of the pain.

iii.

Hiromasa could not decide whether it was worse or better that Seimei had at least tried to   
contact him. There had been a letter after two weeks, another letter after a month.   
Seimei said he missed him, that he did not understand why the sudden silence and the   
complete withdrawal. But that had been all.

Abe no Seimei was not one to pine. Hiromasa didn't really expect it. Except in the sense   
that he secretly wanted it, just a little. But no further word from Seimei had come. He   
had, for a moment, looked hurt when Hiromasa saw him in court and gave him nothing   
but a curt nod. But only once. He hadn't tried to come to the courtiers' apartments to try   
to see him. Not that it would have been any onmyoji's style to go appealing to a lover   
who had rejected him. Onmyoji didn't do that sort of thing. It was not their way.   
Mando concurred, and noted, with a smug grimace, that it was also expedient for Seimei   
not to return to the scene of the crime.

If indeed there had been one. For his own part, Hiromasa had to admit it he was no   
longer sure. He had been to physicians who pronounced him fit and healthy. He had   
sought the counsel of a learned astrologer who had been unable to discern any signs of a   
disturbance in his energies. Perhaps, as Mando suggested, he had become so depleted   
that it was difficult even for an expert to tell it had ever been otherwise.

But if his yang had been depleted, certainly it would return by and by. Each day   
Hiromasa scrutinized himself for signs that his yang was returning. Yet he felt the same   
as ever, walked the same as ever, played his flute the same as ever. The only evidence of   
surges of yang he found came in the form of the cold white stains he increasingly found   
on his bedding when he woke from dreams of Abe no Seimei, and in that connection, he   
had to admit, such a thing could hardly be a surprise.

It was not just at night that he thought of Seimei, though. Every place he went brought   
back a memory, it seemed, and every memory brought with it some scrap of knowledge   
that Seimei had once dropped his way, as if accidentally spilling a pearl from a pocket   
endlessly full of them. They meant more to Hiromasa now that he could not rely on   
Seimei for them, little glimpses of the world the way Seimei saw it all the time,   
connections and insights shimmering like fireflies in a net.

And they were useful, too. Hiromasa had been able to gauge the Mikado's mood   
correctly just by the way he held his spoon, the other night, and having done so, played   
Kitoku no kyu at just the right moment to bring a smile. It was a small thing, but a large   
thing at the same time. Like knowing, without looking, which of the ministers of the first   
rank had entered a room by his footfall. Or being able to tell Lord Motokawa one   
morning exactly how he knew that Lord Kaneie was late to court because he had slept in   
a cheap whore's bed the night before: Kaneie's own bed had a silken pillow, yet the   
marks on Kaneie's still-groggy face betrayed intimate acquaintance with one made of   
cheap, coarse flax and filled with pebbly buckwheat.

Such moments were a bit like having Seimei wink at him from inside his own head.   
They made Hiromasa smile every time, amazed and bittersweet. He had, it seemed,   
managed to pick up a few of those pearls Seimei had poured out. If he wasn't careful he   
might get a reputation for being something other than the dumb, pretty guy with the flute.   
Hiromasa would never be Seimei's intellectual equal, to be sure, but there was something   
to be said for carrying a few thoughts of an Abe no Seimei caliber around in your head.

It was one of those little Seimei thoughts, in fact, that made Hiromasa call out to the   
drovers guiding his ox-cart. He would not, he decided, go directly to the apothecary to   
which Mando had told him that morning to go. Instead he would pay a call on his uncle's   
wife's mother, just the other side of Ichijo-Modori bridge. She was a dear, if difficult,   
old woman, sure to prod him in the ribs with a bony finger and inquire embarrassingly if   
he intended to marry soon, or if it was his plan to forever deprive his poor mother of   
grandchildren. He couldn't remember having looked forward to it more. He would have   
to stop on the way and get a box of sweet cakes for her.

If Hiromasa faintly recalled that the Ichijo-Modori bridge had the reputation of being a   
sort of portal to the spirit world, and that Seimei had startled him more than once by   
having heard things Hiromasa thought he was saying to himself in the privacy of the ox-  
cart on the way across, well, surely it had nothing to do with his decision to go pay a visit   
to a revered and elderly auntie. And if he muttered to himself about how strange it   
seemed for someone who claimed to be an onmyoji to be coming to a courtier for help, let   
alone sending him to fetch a potion from alchemist Takemitsu, when he had never heard   
of an onmyoji using alchemy before, surely it was only muttering, and muttering from a   
safe distance at that.

iv.

Takemitsu's shop was at the end of a skinny alley crowded with crates and heaps of wood   
and cages of chickens and coils of rope and runny-nosed children and mysterious lumpy   
bales wrapped in dark cloth. There was hardly room for two men to walk side by side   
down the middle, and no room at all for a nobleman's oxcart, so the cart waited while   
Hiromasa walked alone. The weather that made his breath into cottony mist gave him   
ample excuse to hide his trembling hands in his sleeves. Hiromasa had never met an   
alchemist before, only heard stories, and the stories he had heard were not reassuring.

The door was thick and heavy, much more than Hiromasa expected given the   
surroundings. But whatever grandeur the bands of iron that girded the thick cedar planks   
had once lent the door, it had gone to rust along with the metal itself. The door swung   
only with difficulty, and its hinges complained as it opened into a small, dark universe of   
unpleasant smells.

It took a moment for Hiromasa's eyes to adjust enough for him to see that the front room,   
so tiny he wasn't sure it was even a single jo, was empty but for the packed shelves of   
jars that lined it. He called the alchemist's name, but there was no response, only a   
distant rustle from behind a shadowy doorframe hung with soot-blackened cloth.   
Tentatively, Hiromasa pushed it aside.

Like a god in a legend, Seimei was there. The splendid white of his coat seemed to shine   
with a light of its own in the dim fug of Takemitsu's workroom. The alchemist looked   
up, hair hanging into his deeply lined face, but he did not move to greet the newcomer.   
Hiromasa looked down at the earthen floor. There had been some sort of scuffle, to be   
sure, for the packed dirt bore fresh scars. But it also bore five sharp lines, gouged deep   
and clear, forming the five-pointed star of Abe no Seimei's holy sigil. The alchemist   
stood imprisoned in its center, seething.

Seimei bowed, deep and long and formal. "Hiromasasama."

The formal honorific stung. Hiromasa bowed back, not knowing what else to do. But   
when he straightened, he saw the hint of a foxy smile at the corner of Seimei's mouth.

"And how is your uncle's wife's mother, Hiromasa? You were visiting her, yes? I can't   
think what else would have taken you across Ichijo-Modori-bashi."

"The Lady Himiko is in the finest of health, and I am sure she thanks you for asking."   
Hiromasa smiled in spite of himself. "She was full of news, as usual."

"Ah, news. A passion it seems the Lady Himiko shares with my esteemed colleague   
Takemitsusan, here."

"Oh?" Hiromasa felt mildly stupid, as if there were some connection he were supposed   
to be making but wasn't.

Seimei nodded, and explained. The alchemist, it transpired, was in the employ of a rather   
infamous necromancer, a man named Ashiya Doman. Doman, it had further emerged,   
had once been exiled, and when he had not been heard from or seen in fifteen years, he   
had been presumed dead. But the announcements of his demise had turned out to be   
premature. Doman returned from exile in secret, nursing dreams of power and revenge.   
Bribing alchemist Takemitsu with promises of shared power, Doman had commissioned   
the compounding of a formula so dangerous that no reputable student of alchemy would   
even speak its name. Properly made, and properly ingested, the potion would render the   
victim helpless against magical suggestion, little more than a walking, talking puppet in   
the hands of the nearest magician. All that Doman had to do was to find an   
impressionable soul close enough to the heart of the court to be able to be in the right   
place at the right time to administer it. The person had to be trusting enough not to   
suspect that "Mando" was but a reversal of the syllables of another name, and young   
enough not to have any mental association with the name "Doman" even if he did. That   
Abe no Seimei's lover fit the description so perfectly was, as the saying went, aita kuchi   
ni botamochi, a cake falling into an open mouth.

Hiromasa stood gawping with his mouth wide open for a long, awkward moment.

"But Mando-I mean, Doman, told me that the potion was protection! That it would   
guard the Mikado against your spells! That you were trying to usurp his power, to take   
over the throne..."

"And you were right to doubt him," Abe no Seimei chuckled. The onmyoji's eyes   
twinkled and locked, for an instant, on the young courtier's. It was the merest of   
moments, but something about the look in Seimei's eyes made Hiromasa acutely aware   
that there was nothing wrong with his yang energy at all. All Hiromasa could do was   
blush, and stammer.

The magician smiled indulgently for a moment, but then the smile faded into a small, sad   
frown. "Shall I tell you a secret, Hiro-chan?"

Hiro-chan. Hiromasa nodded against the sudden tender lump in his throat and resisted the   
urge to touch Seimei's cheek.

Seimei reached into the holy barrier and touched Takemitsu's ears, whispering. The   
alchemist froze in place, eyes closed, as if turned to stone. Then, in hushed tones, the   
onmyoji told his tale.

Hiromasa listened, rapt, as Seimei told how his mother (so she really had been a kitsune!)   
had been found drowned after a battle with a band of kappa who had been trying to rape a   
noblewoman. His father, despondent and grieving, had neglected his son, and when   
Ashiya Doman had taken him under his wing and cared for him, he had not complained.   
Nor had Seimei. After all, how on earth could the young boy have known that soon he   
would be kidnapped to the mountains, enslaved as the catamite, errand-boy, and protg   
of one of the most notorious necromancers of the era?

It would be a mistake to say that Seimei had learned nothing in the years that he spent   
under Doman's thumb. But mostly what he learned was that he was nothing like Doman,   
and that Doman was as hateful and evil as a human could be, more demon sometimes   
than demons themselves.

Five years of servitude passed before a chance encounter led to Seimei's freedom. Sent   
into the city to obtain a special instrument for his master, young Seimei had chanced   
upon a beautiful noblewoman walking alone along the road. Respectfully, he bowed as   
he passed her. But he had hardly gone ten steps farther before he heard her cry out and   
fall, her ankle turned on a loose stone. Seimei feared what his master might do to him if   
he returned later than expected, but he could not leave the woman injured in the road. He   
helped her up, and tore his own ragged shirt to make a bandage for her ankle.

Looking at the boy's unwashed face up close, the woman was able to make out a   
resemblance beneath the filth: he could be none other than the son of the valiant kitsune   
who had died saving her from the evil kappa some years past. And indeed he was, just as   
sure as she was the immortal Lady Aone. Aone-do became Seimei's protectress, buying   
him away from the horrible Doman and sending him off to learn to be an onmyoji. Thus   
had the Lady Aone repaid a debt to a fallen sister by caring for her child, in the time-  
honored way of women.

That was the first time Seimei had thought he had gotten quit of Doman. But the   
necromancer had a way of cropping up unexpectedly, like fungus on trees. Years later, in   
his very first season in the Mikado's college of onmyoji, Seimei had dealt with him   
again, and been part of the tribunal that had led to Doman's exile. Banished to the ice   
mountains of the farthest north, it seemed unlikely that Doman could ever return, and   
when no word of him drifted back to the capital, it was gradually assumed that he had   
died in exile.

And that was where Takemitsu came in. Compelled to the truth by the power of the holy   
barrier in which Seimei trapped him, the alchemist explained that Doman had come back   
yet again. Overcoming many hardships and more miles, Doman returned to the capital   
with vengeance in his heart, determined to take over the Mikado's power... and bring   
down Abe no Seimei.

That Doman would want to be Mikado was not difficult to imagine. Doman loved   
nothing more than to be worshipped, feared, and obeyed. But it had come as a grim   
surprise to Seimei to hear that Doman was convinced that Seimei had, as a child, stolen   
part of his magical ability and a great many of his magical secrets. In Doman's warped   
and shadowy mind, all that Abe no Seimei had, all that he was, all that he had become   
was rightfully Doman's.

"Little wonder that he decided to try to get at me through you, Hiro-chan," Seimei   
concluded. "To take you from me, then to use you to frame me for trying to poison the   
Mikado... one almost has to admire it."

Hiromasa nodded idiotically. As seemed so often to be the case when Seimei was on the   
job, Hiromasa had a strong sensation of intellectual vertigo. But there was another,   
different sensation struggling to make itself felt in the midst of his confusion. Hiromasa   
looked at Seimei's contemplative face and knew what it was. The anger he been unable to   
feel before had finally arrived.

Hiromasa's hand went to his sword. "I could kill him, Seimei."

"No, probably not," Seimei said cheerfully. "His magic is fairly strong. But more to the   
point, he's got no reason not to kill you first. After all, with Takemitsu's bottle in your   
hand, you're the one trying to poison Mikado, not him."

Hiromasa fumed. "So what then?"

Seimei took a small vial from his sleeve. The seal bore the alchemist's mark. "You go to   
the banquet tonight, Hiromasa. And you do just as Doman asked, and pour this potion   
into Mikado's wine."

"But what about the Mikado? What about Doman?"

Seimei winked, and would say no more.

v.

The Emperor's banquet for the winter solstice was always grand, but this year it seemed   
even grander than before. An army of servants formed a constant parade from the   
banquet hall to the kitchens and back again, bearing dish after exquisite, delicate dish.   
Hiromasa watched and waited, nerves buzzing like bees in a sack. He hadn't been so   
nervous since the first time he had been sent to meet with Abe no Seimei. Even his first   
performance for the Mikado's court hadn't given him such a case of jitters.

Eventually the wine bearers came, bearing the lidded cups of the specially made plum   
wine with which the Mikado and his family would toast the longest night and welcome   
the return of the sun. Hiromasa would play them into the hall, as was customary. He   
went eagerly to join the servants.

He was surprised how simple it was to get the potion into the Mikado's cup. A simple   
combination of feigning horror at a smudge on the servant's collar, a helpful spot-  
cleaning, and a voluminous sleeve behind which the other hand could do what was   
necessary were all that had been required. It made him feel sick. The only things that   
kept him from dashing out into the bushes to vomit were the fact that he his performance   
was imminent... and that Seimei would be there.

Seimei was, in fact, standing just at the other side of the doorway when the wine bearers   
entered, Hiromasa in the lead. The blessing of the wine was a ceremonial role, and the   
onmyoji took turns filling it. Hiromasa wondered whether Seimei pulled strings to be the   
one to fill it that night, or whether it had fortuitously been his turn.

Hiromasa paused for the blessing. Seimei whispered something under his breath and   
made a small, subtle gesture, his fingertips brushing the end of Hiromasa's flute. It might   
have been ritual, or it might not. Hiromasa couldn't remember it having been quite the   
same the previous year, but that was a year ago. What he did know was that at the very   
last instant that it was possible, Seimei leaned in.

"Whatever happens, don't stop playing. He'll listen to your flute."

Hiromasa hoped his nod was undistinguishable from the motions of playing the flute. He   
stopped at his appointed place, well behind the Mikado and to his left, and continued   
playing, swaying just a little with the graceful motion of the long, elegant phrases and the   
sliding tones he bent as deftly as he could. Abe no Seimei took the Mikado's wine cup   
from the tray and presented it.

The Mikado enjoyed ceremony, the more symbolic and poetic, the better. He raised his   
cup to the assembled banqueters, his family following suit to either side of him along the   
main table, then removed the lid with a smile. The smell of the wine pleased him, it was   
clear, for his smile grew wider and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper, and he   
lifted the cup to his lips.

Whatever happens, don't stop playing, Hiromasa reminded himself firmly. Whatever   
happens.

The Mikado looked normal enough as he finished his cup. He set it down on the table at   
the end of a particularly ornate phrase from the flute, and wiped his lips delicately as   
Hiromasa began another. And then he rose to his feet and began to dance.

The banqueters gasped. The Mikado's household clapped hands over their mouths in   
shock. The assembled onmyoji, except for Abe no Seimei, looked at one another in   
horrified worry. As the Mikado lumbered ungracefully across the floor, only Abe no   
Seimei and Minamoto no Hiromasa failed to react, and for Hiromasa, it was only because   
he had to concentrate to keep playing the flute.

No one knew what to do. The Left Minister tried to put an arm around the Mikado, tried   
to lead him back to his seat, but the Mikado brushed him away and did a gentle twirl.   
Lord Kaneie called out to the Mikado, but he did not seem to hear. Instead he floated   
around the head of the room, a look of pure bliss on his face. The Mikado's happiness   
only intensified as Hiromasa segued from the formal piece he had been playing to a   
sprightly saibara, a pretty, popular drover's song. In his formal, heavy robes, Mikado   
danced like a boy beneath a full moon, joyful and buoyant, completely at one with the   
music that poured from Hiromasa's flute.

With a laugh, he danced over to Abe No Seimei, who still stood at his post behind the   
Mikado's table, and took his hands. "Don't you hear it, Abe no Seimei? The music wants   
us to dance!"

Seimei, elegant and unflappable, let himself be led onto the floor. To Hiromasa it   
seemed like hours that Seimei danced with the Mikado before a banquet pavilion filled   
with onlookers who didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or run away from the Mikado's   
evident lunacy. In reality, it was just a few minutes, only long enough for Hiromasa to   
reach the end of one tune and, with barely enough pause for a breath, choose another.

Then a voice rang out from the back of the pavilion. "Abe no Seimei! What in the seven   
hells are you doing?"

Somehow, Seimei managed to make a formal bow in the middle of executing a graceful   
turn. "Why, Doman my old friend, I dance with my Lord."

Every onmyoji, and most of the rest of the people in the pavilion, turned to stare at the   
interloper. Doman had come in through the back of the hall, and stood there, wild-eyed,   
hand on the hilt of a sword for which, Hiromasa realized bleakly, he had probably paid.   
Doman had dressed the part of an onmyoji too, going so far as to wear a red coat, symbol   
of the head of the college of magicians. Whispers rustled throughout the pavilion, almost   
drowning out the sound of Hiromasa's flute. Ministers stared at onmyoji, onmyoji at   
ministers, women of the court looked at each other in worried silence.

Whatever happens, don't stop playing, Hiromasa repeated silently, beginning a slower,   
statelier melody. The Mikado paused only until the new rhythm took hold, and began to   
dance again. Abe no Seimei followed his movements, and it was not until a moment or   
two had passed that Hiromasa realized that Seimei was deliberately positioning himself   
between Doman and the Mikado.

Doman began to move, not dancing, but darting from side to side, his hands held aloft in   
mystic gestures, his lips moving as he chanted feverishly and tried his best to get a clear   
view of the Mikado. The dance became a threesome, Doman creeping closer and closer   
to the front of the hall where Hiromasa played and Seimei danced with the Mikado,   
Seimei and Doman darting and feinting, halting and weaving like mirror images of one   
another. There were gasps and shudders from the banqueters, but the Mikado seemed not   
to notice at all.

Doman had come close enough now that Hiromasa could not only sense but see his rage.   
His face was red, his lips pale. The music still burst forth from Hiromasa's flute,   
propelled by sheer force of will.

"Seimei!" Doman screamed, lunging for the onmyoji's throat.

Hiromasa missed a note, and the Mikado stumbled. But Hiromasa managed to play the   
next one as Seimei bobbed away from the shrieking Doman, and the Mikado resumed his   
dance as if he'd never paused.

Don't stop now, Hiro-chan, Hiromasa urged himself. Just keep playing.

A dreamy smile on his lips, Seimei weaved and writhed and led Doman's punches so   
deftly it was almost impossible to tell he was no longer dancing.

"Faster, Hiromasa! Faster!" Seimei barked, mid-whirl.

Hiromasa switched to a riding tune, a short refrain with a galloping beat. Doman pulled   
his sword. Seimei blocked it as it swooshed down, seemed to fly over it as it came up,   
ducked and rolled and leapt as Doman single-mindedly sought to slaughter him right   
there in the banquet pavilion. Sweat began to run down the sides of the necromancer's   
face, dripping onto his fine red coat. Hiromasa played on, whatever came to his mind to   
play, now the refrain of a spring moon song, next three verses of a filthy drinking tune   
that happened to begin on the tone with which the ballad ended. The Mikado continued   
to dance, still unconscious of anything but the music, his mouth open, his breathing   
grown heavy.

Doman and Seimei continued their battle, slashing and dancing their way around the   
insensible Mikado. Every so often, Abe no Seimei would, seemingly at random, tap the   
Mikado's body as he rolled and dove and leapt past him. Hiromasa continued to play,   
almost light-headed from the effort.

And then Doman stood still, his sword tip resting on the floor. He stared at the Mikado.   
So did everyone else. The Mikado, still dancing, clutched his stomach and retched once,   
twice, thrice. With a horrible noise, his mouth opened wide and an oily, glowing   
blackness poured from his lips and fell to the floor in a long, thick rope. Lady Reiko   
shrieked and fainted into her sister's lap. The evil black stuff twisted itself into a sigil on   
the floor, Doman's own sign, sizzling and bubbling as it burned its way through the   
tatami and into the wood.

The Mikado looked up, blinking. "Doman?"

The Mikado looked around at the quaking courtiers, the boggle-eyed onmyoji, the women   
huddling into one another in terror, then back at the man he could not quite believe he   
was seeing. Doman stood, his sword still down, and stared at the Mikado and at Abe no   
Seimei.

"You are fat and slow, old man," Doman said calmly. "And as for your pretty onmyoji,   
he is more interested in sleeping with your flute player over there than he is in you. I am   
not afraid of either one of you."

Hiromasa had not stopped playing. He had not even slowed down. Somehow, he could   
not stop himself. His lips seemed to purse of their own will, his fingers moved without   
him telling them to. The tone of his flute had gone wild, too, shrill and piercing and   
almost agonizingly loud. It was embarrassing. It was awful. But Hiromasa could do   
nothing but play on.

Doman whipped around. "And as for you, you useless piece of excrement, stop that   
shrieking pipe or I'll..."

And there was silence. Abe no Seimei's finger lay against the side of Doman's neck, as   
if he had meant to caress him just behind the ear. Doman stood frozen, his mouth   
contorted around the ugly words that he had been in the process of forming. Hiromasa   
gibbered. His flute clattered to the floor.

"Tsk, Doman," Seimei said, his voice soft. "Such a shame you never realized the one   
spell I did steal from you when I left, so many years ago."

Seimei reached out and ran a finger of his other hand along the blade of Doman's sword.   
With the blood on his fingertip, he drew his own sigil on Doman's forehead, then   
squeezed a drop between the necromancer's open lips. The onmyoji whispered   
something, then gestured to Lady Momoko, the Left Minister's wife.

"Forgive me, Lady Momoko, but do you have your little friend with you tonight?"

With trembling hands, the woman reached deep into her sleeve and produced a tiny   
carved cage. The chirping of a cricket, good-natured and even, came from inside.

Seimei took the cage and shook its inhabitant into the necromancer's mouth, closing   
Doman's lips with his bloody finger.

Doman's body shook, then shimmered. His sword fell to the tatami with a heavy thud.   
To Hiromasa it seemed as if he turned into a mist or a vapor, then the vapor shrank,   
contracting into a ball that grew smaller and smaller and darker and darker. The clothes   
Doman had been wearing slipped to the floor with no sound louder than the shush of silk   
on silk. Finally Abe no Seimei bent over the pooled fabric and began pushing through it,   
sifting through the folds until he finally located what he was looking for. Hiromasa   
wasn't quite sure if the cricket he picked up was a little larger than the one he had taken   
out of Lady Momoko's cage, but he thought so. Seimei popped the dark little insect back   
into its box and closed the lid.

Abe no Seimei returned the cage with a deep bow and a flourish. "My thanks, gracious   
lady."

"But... what did you do to him?" Lady Momoko blurted, peering at the cricket through   
the carved filigree.

Seimei's half-smile could have been reflective, or it could simply have been sad.   
"Nothing that he did not deserve."

vi.

The brittle light of winter dawn brought a pale glow to Abe no Seimei's bedroom.

Hiromasa nuzzled the back of Seimei's head, his leg slung comfortably over the other   
man's hip beneath the warm, heavy quilts. "Why did you not tell me sooner?"

Seimei turned his head just enough that Hiromasa could see him roll his eyes. "Why   
didn't you?"

Hiromasa poked his lover in the ribs. "You are impossible."

"I know," he yawned.

Weary in the dawn light, Abe no Seimei snuggled backward against Minamoto no   
Hiromasa. Hiromasa tugged the covers a little higher, tucking them in under Seimei's   
chin. Then they slept, sweet and easy in the quiet warmth of their winter bed, and dreamt   
of dancing.

== The End ==

 


End file.
